


Petals of a Rose

by This_is_The_Phantom_Lady



Category: Michael Jackson (Musician)
Genre: Coping, Death, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 04:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1843996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_is_The_Phantom_Lady/pseuds/This_is_The_Phantom_Lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remembering a man who left such an impact on my life</p>
            </blockquote>





	Petals of a Rose

The years could not wash away the tears that she had shed for him. The years never made that certain date any easier. The day before was almost worse; worrying about whether or not she would be able to cope.   
In the morning she would pretend to be fine and go about her business as usual. The sadness nagging in the back of her mind, slowly but surely chipping away at her brave smile… No she was not all right. She was not. And no one around her even tried to understand so she never told them why the sadness overtook her.

In a book she kept a dried rose petal. It had turned the colour of dried blood. She was given a huge bucket of red roses on the day of his passing as this day was the first day in the rest of her life; or it was supposed to have been at least.   
The roses she kept in her room and dedicated them to him. Her saviour who was now gone. The roses did not wilt or rot the way flowers usually went. They simply preserved themselves in a dried state only turning a much darker shade but keeping their form and she could not make herself get rid of them. Once in a while a petal would fall onto the shrine she had formed around the vase.   
For an entire year she left the roses there untouched but by then they had to go and she buried them in her garden like she could not bury him. Tears falling on the petals that now all seemed to fall off into the cold earth where she left them and placed a stone the shape of a heart on top for safekeeping. 

Five long years. And yet it felt like last night to her. A distant memory of a dream; no a nightmare… an evil and cruel nightmare.   
Her wrists now bore two tattoos. The ink slightly fading with the years but the meaning was still there. On her sleeve she bore a blackened heart with his initials carved into her crawling skin and on the other a dark rose with a bloody teardrop falling from a petal.   
He had been her life and he would always be even though others almost like him had passed through her life; some leaving bigger marks than others but none had the impact that he had. She owed her entire life to a man who was no longer amongst the living. It felt like a promise that could never be fulfilled and it kept her frozen. 

The moment he entered her life was only as heart breaking as the moment when he left it again. She was barely even a young girl when the darkness got too dark for her to bear and there was no turning back. Out of the tearstained haze he crawled through and enveloped her giving her a sense of hope and cleared her head of all the wrongdoings she had endured. The world seemed all right for that hour or so; and neither knife nor pills were used that lonely night. She would go on to follow him blindly and allow him to shape her into a better person. Unlocking her potential.

That night when she learned of his passing she was thinking of joining him on his journey. It seemed to make sense to her; what did she have to live for? What was the pleasure in graduating when he was no longer in the world to thank for making her pull through; to actually achieve something for herself. As if life with him as a part of her life had been a loop there she sat with pills and knife in hand bidding the dark and now empty world farewell. And the years that followed she reached that same point; her cheeks stinging with tears that no one seemed to notice or understand the origin of and if they did would not believe were for something so minor to them. The loss of her hero. 

Something always kept her around though, made her put the knife back in the drawer and pills back in the cupboard. A sound would break the silence that was else only broken by her sobbing and cries from the pain of a heart shattered into a million pieces and cutting her from the inside.   
A serene tune would fill the emptiness and lift her up. She would look around and see nothing but the darkness. But he was there with her. Reminding her that she had a purpose and the least she could do was live for him; live with him in her heart and live as the person he had moulded her into through his never ending love for an entire world who never understood it. 

All she could do was simply whisper “Thank you Michael, thank you…”


End file.
